It is impossible for Ethereum blockchain to record all events
a brief history of etheric Classics (etc)
etheric classics began with an unfortunate event
in May 2016, the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) held a token sale with the goal of establishing a blockchain based venture capital to fund future decentralized applications (dapps) in the Ethereum ecosystem
basically, Dao is a complex smart contract that operates in a decentralized way - computer code that automatically performs tasks between multiple parties when conditions are met
despite its ambitious goals and successful token sales, Dao's code has a major vulnerability that allows attackers to steal eth from decentralized organizations
the attacker took advantage of this vulnerability in June 2016, triggering the infamous Dao hacking event, and maliciously stole eth worth about US $50 million
there is no doubt that Dao hacking has shocked Ethereum community and made eth price drop from $20 to $13
after the Dao hacking, the Ethereum community has to choose from three options
< UL >do nothing and try to bear the consequences of the attack
start soft bifurcation to recover funds
deploy a hard fork to recover the lost eth
both soft and hard bifurcations are significant network upgrades. However, soft fork allows users who are not upgraded to communicate with upgraded users, while hard fork is not backward compatible with previous versions
as developers realize that deploying soft forks will expose the network to distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, Ethereum community decides to initiate hard forks to recover the funds lost in Dao hacking attacks
although this scheme is supported by most people, a small number of people in Ethereum community oppose it. They think that "code is the law" and blockchain network should be unchangeable
the failure of both sides to reach an agreement on the solution eventually led to the fragmentation of Ethereum blockchain
those who tried to recover the lost eth chose the hard fork and opened the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain as we know it today, while another group stayed on the original Ethereum classic (etc) chain
what problems does ethereal classic solve
Ethernet classic (etc) is a blockchain platform that allows developers to deploy smart contracts and dapps
although this function is the same as Ethereum (ETH), etc blockchain has two main differences
first of all, Ethereum classic community opposes tampering with distributed ledger and supports the view that "blockchain network cannot and should not be modified"
secondly, although there is no rigid upper limit on the total supply of eth, it is allowed to create 230 million etc at most by adopting the monetary policy of constant supply
as a bonus item, ethereal classic launched Atlantis hard bifurcation last year to increase the interaction with Ethereum and improve the privacy protection of transactions through ZK snarks
the trading platforms recommended by ethereal classic etc are: Fire coin, okex, AAX, etc strong>
There is an essential difference between Ethereum and bitcoin. What is the difference? Bitcoin defines a set of currency system, while Ethereum focuses on building a main chain (which can be understood as a road) to allow a large number of blockchain applications to run on this road
from this point of view, Ethereum's application scenarios are more extensive, which is why we say that Ethereum marks a simple monetary system in the era of blockchain
1.0, and a transformation to other instries and application scenarios in the era of blockchain 2.0
however, there is no perfect thing in the world. Although Ethereum has expanded the application scope of blockchain in all walks of life and improved the speed of transaction processing, it also has some disputes and doubts
first, the solution to the lack of scalability of Ethereum: slicing technology and lightning network
the bottom design of Ethereum, the biggest problem is that Ethereum has only one chain and no side chain, which means that all programs have to run on this chain equally, consuming resources and causing system congestion. Just like last year's very popular Ethereum game "encryption cat", when this game was very popular, it once caused Ethereum network paralysis
to improve the processing capacity, Ethereum proposes two ways: shard and lightning network. Let's introce these two technologies respectively
(1) fragmentation technology
vitalik buterin, founder of Ethereum, believes that the reason why mainstream blockchain networks such as bitcoin process transactions very slowly is that every miner has to process every transaction in the whole network, which is actually very inefficient. The idea of fragmentation technology is: a transaction does not need to be processed by all nodes in the whole network, as long as some nodes (miners) in the network are allowed to process it. Therefore, Ethereum network is divided into many pieces. At the same time, each piece can handle different transactions. In this way, the network performance will be greatly improved
however, the slicing technology is also controversial. As we all know, the important idea of blockchain technology is decentralization. Only when the whole network witnesses (processes) the same transaction can it have the highest authority. The Ethereum slicing technology is similar to the group witness, not all nodes witness together. In this way, it will lose the absolute "decentralization" attribute, and can only achieve the purpose of high performance by sacrificing certain characteristics of decentralization
(2) lightning network
lightning network uses the way of transaction under the chain. What does that mean? It means: when the participants of lightning network transfer money to each other, they do not need to confirm the transaction through the main chain of Ethereum, but create a payment channel between the participants and complete it under the chain
however, lightning network is not separated from the main chain. Before establishing a payment channel, you need to use the assets on the main chain as collateral to generate a balance proof, which indicates that you can transfer the corresponding balance. In the case that both parties of the transaction hold the balance certificate, both parties can make unlimited number of transfers under the chain through the payment channel
only when the off chain transaction is completed and the assets need to be transferred back to the chain, the balance change information of the main chain account will be registered on the Ethereum main chain, and no matter how many transactions occur ring this period, there will be no record on the main chain
another real benefit of lightning network is that it can save the cost of miners for you. At present, when we trade on the main chain of Ethereum, we need to consume gas and pay for miners. Once we move the transaction to the lower chain, we can save this part of the cost
Of course, lightning network is not perfect. When using the lightning network, the assets on the main chain should be used as collateral; And this part of assets as collateral can not be used before the user completes the transaction under the chain. This also determines that lightning trading is only suitable for small transactionsthe above is the problem of insufficient scalability of Ethereum, as well as the two main solutions: fragmentation technology and lightning network
Second, there are loopholes in Ethereum's smart contract and the infamous Dao event
Ethereum's smart contract is very powerful, but there are loopholes in any code. The biggest controversy of Ethereum's smart contract lies in the so-called loopholes, that is, security issues. According to relevant research, 34200 (about 3%) of the nearly 1 million smart contracts based on Ethereum contain security vulnerabilities, which will allow hackers to steal eth, freeze assets or delete contracts, such as the infamous Dao incident
(1) what does Dao meanbefore introcing the Dao event, let's first introce what Dao is. Dao is the abbreviation of decentralized
autonomous organization, which can be understood as decentralized autonomous organization. From the perspective of Ethereum, Dao is a kind of contract or a combination of contracts on the blockchain, which is used to replace the government's review and complex intermediate proceres, so as to achieve an efficient and decentralized trust system. Therefore, Dao is not a specific organization, that is to say, there can be many Dao, all kinds of Dao
(2) the infamous Dao event
however, when we talk about Dao now, we basically refer to the Dao event, that is, the infamous hacker attack event we just mentioned. As we know, the English word "the" refers to "the Dao event". The Dao event
refers to "the Dao event", because we just said that Dao is not a specific organization, there can be many Dao, all kinds of Dao
in 2016, slock.it, a German company focusing on "smart locks", launched the Dao project on Ethereum in order to realize decentralized physical exchange (such as apartments and ships). Since April 30, 2016, the financing window has been open for 28 days
unexpectedly, this Dao project is very popular. It raised more than US $100 million in just half a month. By the end of the whole financing period, it raised a total of US $150 million. Therefore, it has become the largest crowdfunding project in history. However, it didn't last long. In June, hackers took advantage of the loopholes in the smart contract to successfully transfer more than 3.6 million Ethernet coins and put them into a Dao sub organization, which has the same structure as the Dao. At that time, the price of Ethernet currency fell directly from more than $20 to less than $13
this event shows that there are loopholes in smart contracts, and once the loopholes are exploited by hackers, the consequences will be very serious. This is why many people criticize Ethereum and say that its smart contract is not smart
to solve this problem, many foreign companies begin to provide code audit services in order to solve the vulnerability problem of smart contract. From a technical point of view, some teams are currently testing smart contracts. Most of these teams are led by professors from Harvard, Stanford and Yale, and some of them have obtained investment from leading institutions
in addition to the problems of insufficient expansibility and loopholes in smart contracts, the controversy over Ethereum lies in the POS consensus mechanism it pursues, that is, the proof of equity mechanism. Under the proof of equity mechanism, if anyone holds more money and holds it for a longer time, he will get more "rights" (interests) and have the opportunity to get bookkeeping power, Bookkeeping can also be rewarded. In this way, it is easy to create the oligarchic advantage of "the stronger the stronger"
Another problem is the chaos of ICO. ICO is a common way to raise funds for blockchain projects, which we can understand as pre-sale. The outbreak of ICO projects on Ethereum has caused illegal activities such as fund allocation and money fraud under the banner of ICO, which has caused security risks to social and financial stabilitywhat is Ethereum:
Ethereum is an innovation based on the application of technologies and concepts in bitcoin to computers. Ethereum itself imitates a lot of bitcoin technology to maintain the computer platform. Blockchain technology is one of them
Ethereum platform can safely run any program users want
advantages of Ethereum over other competitive currencies before Ethereum appeared, some digital currencies imitated bitcoin. However, these projects have their own shortcomings, they can only support one or several specific applications at the same time< However, the reason why Ethereum can surpass the limitations of these projects in the past is because of the core idea of Ethereum
what Ethereum wants to implement is a blockchain protocol with built-in programming language. Since it supports programming language, in theory, any blockchain application can be defined with this language, and then run on Ethereum's blockchain protocol as an application
The design of Ethereum is very flexible and adaptable
Ethereum target sets the advantages of blockchain technology, in order to add the advantages of blockchain, such as decentralization, openness and security, to almost all computing fields
blockchain applications of Ethereum
Ethereum has many blockchain applications, such as digital applications of gold and stocks, financial derivatives applications, DNS and digital authentication, etc
Ethereum has achieved more than 100 blockchain applications by many start-ups
Ethereum has also been closely watched by some financial institutions, banking consortia (such as R3), as well as large companies like Samsung, Deloitte, RWE and IBM. As a result, a number of blockchain applications such as simplified and automated financial transactions, merchant loyalty index tracking, and gift cards designed to achieve decentralization of electronic transactions have emerged
the relationship between Ethereum and blockchain:
Ethereum is a programmable blockchain
Ethereum does not give users a series of preset operations (such as bitcoin transaction), but allows users to create complex operations according to their own wishes
in this way, Ethereum can be used as a platform for various types of decentralized blockchain applications, including but not limited to cryptocurrency
like other blockchains, Ethereum also has a peer-to-peer network protocol. Ethereum blockchain database is maintained and updated by many nodes connected to the network. Each network node runs the Ethereum simulator and executes the same instructions. Therefore, people sometimes call Ethereum "world computer"
(1) distributed ledger, that is, transaction bookkeeping is completed by multiple nodes distributed in different places, and each node records complete accounts, so they can participate in monitoring the legitimacy of transactions, At the same time, they can testify together
different from traditional distributed storage, the uniqueness of distributed storage of blockchain is mainly reflected in two aspects: one is that each node of blockchain stores complete data according to block chain structure, while traditional distributed storage generally stores data in multiple copies according to certain rules. Second, the storage of each node in the blockchain is independent and has the same status, which relies on the consensus mechanism to ensure the consistency of storage, while the traditional distributed storage generally synchronizes data from the central node to other backup nodes[ 8]
no single node can record the account data separately, so as to avoid the possibility that a single bookkeeper is controlled or bribed to record false accounts. In theory, unless all the nodes are destroyed, the accounts will not be lost, so as to ensure the security of the account data
(2) asymmetric encryption and authorization technology, the transaction information stored on the blockchain is public, but the account identity information is highly encrypted, which can only be accessed under the authorization of the data owner, thus ensuring the data security and personal privacy
(3) consensus mechanism is how to reach a consensus among all accounting nodes to determine the validity of a record, which is not only a means of identification, but also a means of preventing tampering. Blockchain proposes four different consensus mechanisms, which are suitable for different application scenarios and achieve a balance between efficiency and security
the consensus mechanism of blockchain has the characteristics of "the minority is subordinate to the majority" and "everyone is equal", in which "the minority is subordinate to the majority" does not completely refer to the number of nodes, but also can be the computing power, the number of shares or other characteristics that can be compared by computers“ "Everyone is equal" means that when the nodes meet the conditions, all nodes have the right to put forward the consensus results first, and then directly recognized by other nodes, and finally may become the final consensus results. Taking bitcoin as an example, the workload proof is adopted. Only when more than 51% of the accounting nodes in the whole network are controlled can a nonexistent record be forged. When there are enough nodes in the blockchain, this is basically impossible, thus eliminating the possibility of fraud.
(4) smart contract, which is based on these trusted and tamperable data, can automatically execute some pre-defined rules and terms. Take insurance as an example. If everyone's information (including medical information and risk occurrence information) is true and reliable, it is easy to carry out automatic claim settlement in some standardized insurance procts
Chinese Mahjong: the world's earliest blockchain project
first of all, a initiates an application. I want to play mahjong and set up a mahjong Bureau, which is equivalent to creating a block, and this block will be broadcast to B, C, D, a, B, C, C, C, C, C, D, D, D, D, D, D, D, D, D, D, D, D, D, D, D, D, D, D, D, D, D D...
in the process of playing mahjong, the above four people constantly play cards, which can be understood as mining, through what to mine? Mahjong machine can understand the mineralization machine. These four miners are the so-called miners. These four miners collide from 144 mahjong, and any right card can be Hu card. We can understand the 144 mahjong as a series of hash values (numbers). The process of Hu card is called computational power. Until Hu card, it means that the right hash value is collided and you can get a reward, Each person will pay the corresponding chips to C and put them in the blockchain. The reward is bitcoin or other virtual coins
Why do the other three people take the initiative to reward C? That's because these people have automatically reached a consensus that C has indeed won, and everyone has recorded the account, including the family members who are sitting next to buy horses. It's not good to deny it, otherwise when it comes out that the character is not good, no one will play with him again. After all, the circle is very important
when we reached a consensus, we didn't see any intermediary or third party judging that C had won, and the rewards given to C didn't need to be transferred to C through the third party. All of them were direct point-to-point transactions. This process was decentralization. The card players (miners) recorded their own achievements in the first game, and the third team won the first game, After the record is completed, a complete block is generated. But remember, this is only the first round. In the whole blockchain, this is just a node. The first eight rounds are finished, that is, eight nodes (blocks). Eight blocks are connected together to form a complete account book, which is the blockchain. Because everyone has one account book, it is a distributed account book. The purpose is to prevent someone from tampering with records. In the end, it is clear who wins or loses.
